


The Empress’ Blade

by Demmora



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Dishonored 2 will wreck me, Feels, Grandpa Samuel is too old for this shit, I am not prepared for the next game, blade training, grown up Emily gives me so many emotions, how to train your smol empress to fight, most of them heartbreaking, rat dad and cinnamon roll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6688903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Empress should have her own blade. Fic request for the-darker-we-get on tumblr <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Empress’ Blade

The watery sun gleamed over the Wrenhaven River, hard and blinding in the morning spring light. Tucked away from the worst of the wind under a tumbled down archway, Samuel Beechworth thumbed through the pages of a well-worn book, a mug of something hot placed under his makeshift seat. He didn’t bother to look up when a lithe figure streaked over his head, sending a cascade of debris and dust down in their wake. He still didn’t look up when the larger figure followed after. He did however brush the smattering of rocks from the shoulder of his captain’s jacket, and carried on reading.

Emily ran onwards, boots scrabbling over the uneven footing offered up by the crumbling buildings. They were all that remained of the old city, towering monuments to the ambition and greed of powerful men and the depths to which they could fall and the dead they left in their wake. And in less than two years, Emily would have enough funding to knock it down, level the entire area and use the space to expand the industrial sector along the river front, eke out some space for housing and expand the Clean Water Act with the new aqueduct Piero had designed…

It should have been an easy jump to make, but with her attention divided between her thoughts and the city of New Dunwall looming on the horizon, her timing was off. Emily realized this just as her boots left the solid sanctuary of the rooftop, knew she hadn’t put enough power behind the jump and at best her fingertips might just brush the brickwork on her way down.

The air hummed around her and Corvo was there, pushing off from thin air and bearing them both upwards like a hagfish pushing for the surface.

“Sloppy,” he admonished, letting go of her waist and absently shaking out his left hand as though it stung. Emily didn’t need to look to know that his flesh would be glowing beneath the gloves he wore. “I could tell from five paces back that you weren’t ready to make that jump, but you did it anyway.”

“Sorry,” Emily apologized, trailing off as her gaze trailed over the edge of the roof, down to the murky abyss of green water and flotsam which waited below. While such a fall might not have killed her, there was no telling how deep those waters truly ran, or how strong the current was. Drowning would have been a poor ending for an Empress whose empire had been rebuilt by harnessing the power of water to drive the great lumbering metropolis into a new age of enlightenment. Emily suppressed a shudder, trying not to imagine the water closing over her head.

“Oh?” Corvo rejoined, his sardonic candor coming out now that he was certain of her safety again. “What was so important that you almost became hagfish food?”

“I was thinking about the expansion project, and how all this will be gone soon.” She nodded over the horizon where a statue of her mother remained, the white marble mottled by the elements, shuddering at the sight of what appeared to be crows nesting in the hollow of her eyes. “Piero plans to start from there, knock through the outer wall and drain the district into the sea.”

_And then they’ll burn it all, pour whale oil on the sodden ruins and watch the old city burn like a pyre for a fallen age…_

She jumped at the feel of Corvo’s hand coming to clasp her shoulder, drawing her back to reality with a comforting squeeze.

“It’d be good to know that trick of yours,” she said carefully, flicking her eyes away to look out over the horizon before dragging wide eyes up to meet his scowl, “Just in case.”

Corvo considered her for a moment, jaw working, then pulled away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “I know you think it’s dangerous—“

He scoffed, turning an incredulous stare on her, his left hand flexing self-consciously.

“But if you can control it…”

“No. Why do you think we’re out here?” he asked, waving a hand to encompass the ruins, “Why do you think I taught you to run and jump and sneak like a pickpocket, hm? So I wouldn’t have to—“

“So you wouldn’t have to consider I’d need…the mark.” Emily finished for him, gesturing with her hands in a futile gesture, crossing her arms over her chest, half in frustration, half to try and keep warm. “I know. That doesn’t stop the fact that it would help. You won’t always be there to catch me.”

“Well when that day comes,” Corvo replied, voice suddenly laced with so much emotion that Emily realizes what she has unintentionally implied, and her blood runs cold.

“Corvo, I didn’t mean…”

“When that day comes,” he repeated, a small teasing smirk breaking the harsh line of his jaw, “Then even then I doubt these old bones of mine will rest.”

She didn’t want to laugh, knowing that his words were only half a joke, implying so much more. She laughs anyway, because otherwise she might hear the ghost of whale song in the back of her mind as she does so many nights, hear the skittering crackle of her childhood nightmares, the murmur of bones and the pull of the tide in her veins. As useful as it would be to hold time in the palm of her hand and leap through the air unbound by gravity, she doesn’t want that. Or _Him._ She doesn’t have the nerve to tell Corvo that she sees Him some nights, when she dreams deep and imagines she can hear her mother’s voice calling. The teachings of the Abbey say that it is heresy to even think of him. To admit to being visited by him would be to risk penance on her knees, surrounding herself in scripture like a shield of words. Or worse. But more than the fires that await heretics, Emily fears what Corvo might do to protect her from them. From Him. Him and his black, fathomless eyes.

“You need to pay better attention, Emily.” Corvo reminds her, stepping close again and bracing her shoulder as though she were a young cadet being welcomed into the palace guard. “Not just out here on the rooftops where the danger is obvious, but in the court too. You’ll be sixteen in less than a week and then the regency of council will be lifted…and you need to learn to do it on your own.”

“I know,” Emily replied, reaching up to clasp his gloved hand in her own, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I do know…dad.”

Corvo smiles at her then, and it’s as though the years have been sloughed away to reveal the man he was, before her ascension to the throne, before the plague, before grief had etched lines of pain onto his kind and smiling face and turned his hair grey before his time. Emily would do almost anything to preserve that image, wishing that Sokolov were still alive to capture it.

“Come on, we’ve done enough running about up here for today.” Corvo said, stepping past her and back toward the ledge. “Samuel will have run out of coffee by now.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” Emily replied, fiddling with the neckline of her black coat, military styled, with enough extra fabric at the collar to pass for fashionable should the need arise. She fussed with it until her mouth was protected, preparing to shield her teeth from the cold as they run. “I think he keeps the entire Serkonos coffee trade afloat.”

“Then you should thank him,” Corvo replied blithely, easing his way over the shallow ledge to slide over the slate tiles of the roof. “You need Serkonos to stay happy and rich too. Watch the middle, some of the tiles are loose.”

Emily followed after him, adjusting her weight over the mentioned tiles to avoid sliding into his back, or worse, off the side of the roof entirely. When she was ready, Emily took up her place at the front again, setting off at a light run, with Corvo on her heels.

She didn’t look back, but she could feel those black eyes boring into her, frame by the shape of her mother’s face.

* * *

 

There’s a fire lit in the hearth and Emily is sitting in her overstuffed chair, feet pointed toward it, long arms dangling languidly over the armrests.

Where her mother had been soft and supple, Emily was promising to turn into something nearer to Corvo, all limbs and sharp angles. Corvo knows this is more than just mere familial resemblance eking though, and more to do with the training he’d started her on the moment they were safely back within the palace walls. It had been a game to her then, a means of outlet for an energetic child with too heavy a burden on her narrow shoulders. But now whatever natural form Emily might have taken on had been whittled away, rendered lithe and whipcord lean under his training. And his fear. But he had to be sure, sure that she could run away, sure that she knew how to twist out of a hold, that it was better to fight dirty and live another day than let the other person wrap their hands around your throat…

There had been three more attempts on her life since she was crowned Empress. The most recent incident was a madman roaming the outer walls, switfly dealt with by the guard. The times before that however had been a little more serious, back in the early days when Emily had just been reinstated. Anarchists, gangs who had heralded the plague as the end of days and refused to go back to a system of order over chaos, high on the freedom of violence and willing to do anything to keep it.

Both times warning had come from the unlikely source of the crime lord, Slackjaw who had not only warned Corvo of the impending threat, but had also taken to all out war with the remaining gang members not cut down by the Dunwall guard, beating them into submission with efficient brutality and claiming their territory as his own. Corvo sustained no illusions that it had been done out of some civic moral duty or even the goodness of the other man’s heart, but he’d been…impressed. Especially after Corvo had left him dueling with Granny Rags in the sewers, using his power to possess the old woman, free Slackjaw, then ran for the exit, all thoughts on catching up with Emily before Havelock and the others could rip her away from him again. Slackjaw it seemed, had understood, or at the very least, held no grudges. In return Corvo had turned a blind eye to the way the crime lord’s illicit empire expanded, watching with interest as they turned from brewing to whaling, and then into the construction industry. Half of New Dunwall was built by Slackjaw’s men. Corvo half expected to wake up one day and find the man sitting on the council, smoking a foul cigar and drinking even cheaper whiskey. It’d be refreshing at least to have someone in the court who was honest about their criminal activity.

“Emily.”

He flinched when she started up from her restful position, turning bleary eyes toward him. She looked tired, more tired than he’d like, but there’s little he can do about it. It’d been years since he’d been able to enforce a reasonable bed time for her, and fully suspected if he tried to do so now she may well box his ears. She was certainly tall enough to reach.

“Corvo,” she greeted him scrubbing her hands over her face in an unladylike gesture which she definitely inherited from him and not her mother. “I thought everyone had gone to bed.”

“Shouldn’t you?” he countered, taking the empty seat across from her and kicking his boots toward the fire. Almost forty years spent living in Dunwall, and the damp still managed to cling to his bones.

She smiled weakly at him, gesturing toward the audiographs and sheaves of paper which surrounded her. “In theory. What can I do for you?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her choice of language, but opted not to say anything. She was using her ‘politic’ voice, that special manner of speaking that conveyed polite interest, even when you were half bored to tears. Jessamine had been masterful at it.

“Nothing. Can’t an old man come to see his daughter before going to bed?”

Emily smiled, childish dimples appearing to soften her elegant features, nose wrinkling. He was glad that he hadn’t worn all of her away.

“You’re not that old.”

“I beg to differ,” Corvo replied, shifting in his seat to draw out the slim black velvet wrap from inside his coat. Other father’s might gift their daughters diamonds or pearls in something such as this. “I just wanted to give you this, seen as how it is your birthday.”

As he finished speaking the clock chimed midnight, and Emily straightened up, gripping the arms of her chair in excitement. “Yes! Full power of sovereignty. Time to overrule the council and build a theme park on the beach!”

Corvo laughed, holding out the gift then pulling it back from her over eager hands. “This is not a toy. I want you to promise you will be careful.”

“I promise.” Emily replied, fingers wiggling excitedly.

After another moments hesitation, Corvo handed it over, feeling a pang of something beyond regret when the ebony handle slid out into the delicate palm of her hand. She hefted it for a moment, a look of uncertainty on her face before realization dawned, her lips forming a perfect ‘O’ of surprise.

“I had Piero make it,” Corvo supplied by way of explanation, pulling out his own folded blade and flicking it expertly into the ready position, the blade shining as it caught the firelight. “It should be lighter, but no less strong.”

He watched as Emily tested the weight of the hilt again, relieved when she didn’t try to mimic his trick of flicking the blade open. Instead she carefully tested the switch, holding it away from herself as the blade sprang out. When folded it looked almost innocuous enough to pass for a folded fan, but when open it looked even meaner than Corvo’s blade, the thin line of it making it more a stiletto, but with the added heft of a real sword behind it. It glowed red in the firelight, the gleam carrying along the razor sharp edge of the blade to the point where it glinted.

“Thank you,” she breathed, this time spinning the blade hilt over her hand the way he had taught her to spin sticks and training swords, her movements fluid and sure. He was glad to see no hesitancy there. Hesitance meant you didn’t trust your own skill, and that meant you’d wind up dead. “It’s beautiful, I can hardly feel the weight at all, not like the other swords.”

“That’s good,” Corvo nodded, sliding his own blade back into place and pocketing it again. “You want it to feel like an extension of your arm, in time. There’s no point working with something too heavy just to prove you can. The other person isn’t going to be impressed when you’re moving too slowly to defend yourself.”

“No, they’ll be worrying about the point bit.” She gave a little harsh laugh, and Corvo smiled tightly. He tried hard not to think about what this occasion might have been were Jessamine still alive.

 _Oh beloved,_ the Heart rose up from beyond its quiet murmur in the Void, and Corvo turned his face toward the fire, unable to look at the familiar face in front of him as that voice reverberated through his bones, _She would have begged for a blade anyway…_

He snorted at that, turning the sound into a cough, clearing his throat when Emily turned bright eyes onto him. Her long hair was spilling over her face, freed from its unruly braid and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her brow. He had no idea how long he’d zoned out listening to the thud of the Heart, but Emily had risen up from her and seat and was doing a fair riposte with the blade—despite being in her pajamas. She smiled at him curiously, obviously noting the change in his manner, swiping her hair back from her face when it refused to stay behind her ear.

“That reminds me,” he carried on forcing some false brightness into his voice as he reached inside his breast pocket where the trinket laid close to his heart. “This is for you as well.”

It was a much smaller parcel, wrapped in a blue silk handkerchief and tied with golden ribbon. Callista had done it for him, taking the precious item from shaking hands when he’d claimed to be too clumsy for such small tasks, both of them knowing it to be a lie. He handed it over wordlessly, knowing that once it was open he _had_ to speak, but fearing the break in his voice.

A silver hair piece tumbled out onto Emily’s upturned hand. She looked at it with wonderment, holding it up to the firelight. It was Serkonan in design, forged from the purest silver in the world…

“It’s beautiful,” she smiled, turning it over in her fingers, her sword—carefully folded away—jammed under her left arm. “Where did you get it? It looks like it’s from Serkonos.”

“It is.” Corvo nodded, hearing the wooden tone in his own voice and hating himself for it when her joyous expression flitted to concern, grey eyes darkening. “It was. I bought it…before I left for Dunwall. Did I tell you about how Serkonan knights pledge fealty? No? Really, I thought I had told you everything by now. It was the custom in old Serkonos to give your new liege lord a fealty gift, something to show your appreciation for entering their service. Jess, your mother, was in Serkonos, when she was twelve.”

“And you were picked to be her Protector.” Emily recited, the words primly cheerful like a child reciting a story she’d heard a million times before and never tired of.

“Yes. Her mother was…sick and Jess was…not pleasant to deal with.” He laughed ruefully, swiping a hand over his eyes. Emily sat down in front of him, the trinket held forlornly between both hands. “But she liked stories, so I told her all the old ones, about knights and liege lords and customs.”

“This was your fealty gift.” Emily stated, voice little more than a whisper.

Corvo nodded, wishing he had more control of himself. He’d rehearsed this moment over and over again in his mind. It had been six years, surely some of this pain should have ebbed by now. He looked up in surprise when Emily’s hands clasped over his, looking down into the face of his daughter who had sunk onto her knees to look up at him. There were tears streaming down her beautiful face. Automatically he reached out to wipe them away, but Emily caught his hand in hers again. He looked down in surprise to find the hair piece pressed into his hand.

“I can’t take this,” she said, smiling sadly, “It’s important to you.”

“You’re important.” Corvo corrected, reaching out and clumsily sliding the trinket into her hair with hands that shook only slightly. “There is nothing more important in this world than you. You are my liege, my light, my everything…you were our everything.”

She’d too old to sit in his lap and cling to him, but she does it anyway, awkward limbs drawn up at sharp angles as she held onto him tightly. For a moment he wonders who is holding who, and decides it doesn't matter. She pulls away after a time, wiping her face on her dressing gown sleeve with a hiccupping little laugh. “Thank you…dad.”

Clearing his throat gruffly, all too aware of the wetness on his own face, Corvo ushered her out of his lap and stood up, reaching for the poker by the fire, striking it up to a hearty blaze, warding off the chill which had begun to creep into the room.

“Don’t thank me yet, little one. I plan to have you proficient with that blade before parliament closes for the summer. Starting tomorrow. Well, technically today, I suppose. First thing in the morning before strictures.”

He expects her to groan. She hates early mornings, especially at this time of year when everything is so cold and wet. But if anything she looks more alert than when he first came in, eyes dancing with an energetic fire as she marvels at the folded blade in her hand again.

“Well then,” she replied, favoring him with a vicious little grin, “You’d better get some rest then, old man.”

She darted out of his reach with a laugh, and strolled easily away for her bedroom. Corvo lingered a little while longer, listening to the ebb and flow of the palace at night, the reassuring sound of the guard walking past outside, the comforting pop and crackle of the fire. And there behind it all, the beat of his Heart, slow and steady.

_Thank you..._

 

* * *

“Again,” Corvo demanded, ignoring when Emily swore, several choice words of Sokolov’s escaping her lips. Callista would have had a veritable fit. He didn’t bother to help her up from her rump either, instead merely taking a step back and assuming the ready position as she readied her blade again.

This time when he swung at her she almost managed to deflect before she was toppled again. But she’d seen it coming this time, and rolled the way he’d taught her to, escaping under his arm to skitter over they dusty yard to a safe distance out of his reach.

“Better.” He nodded, already coming toward her as she straightened, lifting her chin up and bracing herself to take the hit. “Don’t be afraid to use your size and speed against your opponent. They’re not going to hold back their strength just because they’re bigger, so be sneaky, kick the bastard in the knees and cut hamstrings if you have to.”

“Is that what you do?” Emily countered, this time managing to glance his blade away, and taking a leap backwards to avoid being caught by his feet again. He glowed with pride when she predicted his next move, somersaulting backward to put further height and distance between then, her booted foot making contact with his left hand and knocking the crossbow of course, sending the dummy cart sailing off to the side and impacting with an unfortunate guard who yelped. Those not caught in the line of fire, applauded in genuine approval.

“When I have to,” Corvo replied, feinting a move to the left and spinning back round on her right, catching her blade in a lock and driving her downward. Naturally she struggled against it, sweat breaking out on her face as she tried to pry her blade free. He let it go on for several more seconds, hoping she’d realize her folly and drop the blade. What he hadn’t been expecting was for her to fold her blade _down_ , sending him into the dirt instead. Her other hand was around his back and pushing off from him in an instant, taking off at a full tilt run toward the sanctuary of the obstacle course across the yard.

“Of course,” he huffed, pulling himself upright and folding his own blade away, absently brushing dust from his coat and grinning as he set off after her, “There’s always running too.”

 


End file.
